Americans are, by and large, exceptionally optimistic people. They tend to dwell on the positive aspects of the country, ever proud of America’s wealth, abundant resources, hardworking people, etc. However, I’ve still found it to be a universal truth that we Americans (and I especially) love to complain about the weather. Whether it’s too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet, or too tornado-y, every region of the U.S. has something to gripe about, as the map above makes evident.

In my own home state of Connecticut, we have several months of “snow-covered moonscape”, but we’re also cursed with heat and humidity (i.e., “air made of hot soup”) in the summer months. And for good measure, we get the occasional hurricane terror and nightmare tornado. Fortunately, we’re spared from volcanos, or “murder mountains”, on the East Coast. Looking at all the threats that face you in every part of the country (except, perhaps, the “mystery belt”), where would you prefer to live?

There’s good and bad no matter where you live, but the grump will always focus on the negative. At least in America, your negatives come in a variety, and you can pick and choose which environmental hazard you mind the least.

It’s Independence Day weekend here in the US, so I’ll have just a short post today, because everyone should be outside enjoying the beautiful weather.

In honor of America’s 239 years of independence, let’s remember our nation’s humble beginning as thirteen tiny colonies. The colonies had to fight against the most powerful empire on earth for the right to self-governance. And yet they prevailed against the British after several years, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783 established the United States as an independent nation. The colonists had the freedom not only to rule themselves, but to expand their territory westward over the North American continent. Over the subsequent years, America took advantage of several opportunities, economic (the Louisiana Purchase), military (the Mexican-American War), and diplomatic (treaties with Great Britain over the boundary with Canada), all of which expanded its territory.

It is truly a marvel to see how the United States grew by such leaps and bounds from 1776 to the present day. Below is a collection of maps from an Atlas which illustrate which areas were added to the union and when. Quite a lot of information is here, including many little-known factoids of American geography, such as the fact that Vermont was an extralegal self-governing entity from 1777 to 1791. With its many territorial possessions across the ocean, America has now become a global empire, a far cry from its thirteen original colonies. Who knows what the future will bring?

This year I would like to explore more unusual methods of mapmaking by a more diverse group of creators. Throughout history, maps by powerful nations and empires have proliferated, but maps by the less powerful actors, if they exist at all, are seldom seen. In this way, we have come to see the world through the eyes of the conquerors, but almost never through the eyes of the conquered.

In the interest of opening our eyes to new perspectives, I want to share a unique Native American map I discovered while flipping through one of the map books I received for Christmas (yes, I got more than one). This map was drawn up by a chieftain of the Catawba tribe that resided in what would become the Southeastern United States. At the time of the map’s creation in 1721, though, this land was being colonized by the British. The British settlements hugged the Eastern seaboard, while the Native American tribes held territory further inland. As the years passed, the British (and later on, the Americans) clashed with the tribes and pushed them further and further west.

But that is a story for another time. For today, let’s take a look at the map, which the chieftain drew on a piece of deerskin at the request of Francis Nicholson, the colonial governor of South Carolina. It shows the location of the neighboring tribes outside of South Carolina.

On the left is the city of Charlestown, and to the right are several circles which indicate the tribes in relation to each other. I do not recognize most of the names, but I do see “Cherrikies”, for the large Cherokee tribe that resided in the area. The map also contains some illustrations, such as that of an Indian on a hunt outside Charlestown. This is certainly a new perspective compared to most maps of colonial settlements in this time period, which show the boundaries of the colonies but neglect to mention the tribes that had been living there for centuries.

An article I read on the WBEZ Chicago website provided an interesting insight into how this map reveals the difference between Native American and Western mapmaking. Apparently, the two cultures had very different ideas on how to represent three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane. The article cites Bob Morrissey, a professor of history at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, who explained that for Native American maps, “rather than a picture or representation of the land, it’s a picture or representation of people on the land. . . . Their positions relative to one another matter as much as their positions relative to the physical space.” To Western eyes, a Native American map might be hard to read because it doesn’t have many frames of reference, but to the mapmakers, it showed all the information it needed to.

Now that FXX is showing an unprecedented 12 day marathon of every episode of the Simpsons ever, it feels like the fictional town of Springfield is truly, in the echoing words of Marge Simpson, a part of us all. A part of us all. A part of us all!

But what is Springfield, and what makes it so special?

The writers have never definitively placed Springfield in any state. Fans have studied the show for clues to guess where it might be located, but I think it’s more fun that it could be anywhere in the United States. That gives much greater flexibility for storylines, as the geography of the town can be changed as needed. The terrain includes mountains, badlands, a national forest, and a harbor to either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, depending on the episode. Springfield is a small, suburban town, but it also somehow seems to have everything: a university, a prison, an airport, a nuclear power plant, and even a giant SPRINGFIELD on the hills overlooking the town. It’s everything for everyone, and that’s what makes it so inviting for the viewer.

There are so many unique places that put the spring in Springfield, and it’s difficult to fit them all in one view. But two ambitious fans, Jerry Lerma and Terry Hogan, set out to do just that by creating a Map of Springfield. Completed in 2004, this seems like a fairly accurate depiction, including both regular settings (like the Kwik-E-Mart and Springfield Elementary) and locations that only appeared in one episode (like Bart’s loft, from when he temporarily emancipated himself from his parents). Look up and down the streets and each block provides a memory from the show, from the Escalator to Nowhere where people got on only to unwittingly fall off at the top, to Dead Weasel Road out in the badlands where Marge had a run-in with some of Springfield’s gangsters (yes, this town even has a mafia). Check out the map for yourselves:

I’ve spent so much time watching episodes of the Simpsons growing up, that Springfield almost feels like a second hometown. I’m proud of all the landmarks, and even the failures. If those Shelbyvillians come to steal our Lemon Tree again, I’ll be the first one over the border to take it back from the car impound lot, that impenetrable fortress of suburbia. (I think you can tell by now that “Lemon of Troy” is one of my all-time favorite episodes.)

For more on the marathon, you can go here: http://www.fxx.com/thesimpsons. If you, like me, don’t get the channel FXX, they are also launching a site in the fall called Simpsons World, where every episode will be available for streaming. It’s a great time to be a Simpsons fan!

Are you angling for a seat aboard Elon Musk’s first mission to Mars? Or are you content to admire the red planet from the comfort of your home on Earth? Either way, it couldn’t hurt to have a map. And scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have just completed the most comprehensive one yet. While it may not prove very helpful as a road map, it does contain a wealth of topological, thermal, and geological information which will be incredibly useful for researchers in the future.

(Via USGS and The Washington Post)

The USGS has also released the following clip on Youtube which shows a rotating globe of Martian geology:

How did they accomplish this feat, when no one has yet stepped foot on Mars? According to the blogpost on the Washington Post website, the information that helped to create this map was culled from images taken by several spacecraft that have been orbiting the planet since the late 1990s. Recent advances in imaging technology have allowed this data to come to life in detailed cartographic form. And now, would-be Martian adventurers will have a better idea of potential landing sites for missions in the future.

We sure have come a long way from the days when our only knowledge of Mars came from telescopes here on Earth. Just to grasp the scope of progress, take a look at the below map by Giovanni Schiaparelli, completed in 1886. Note also how often he named places on Mars after places on earth (such as Arabia) or from classical geography or mythology (Eysium). If you browse the newest map carefully, you can see that some of these names are still used today.

Giovanni Schiaparelli’s Map of Mars, compiled over the period 1877 to 1886. (via Wikipedia)

We recently passed the one year anniversary of the undiscovery of Sandy Island, a sad fate for the phantom island which managed to persist on maps for centuries even though it never existed in the first place. As we’ve seen before with the fictional Mountains of Kong and the Island of California, sometimes false geographical features are reproduced on maps for many years even though they remain unverified. What’s most striking here, though, is the fact that Sandy Island continued to appear on maps into the 21st Century, and even showed up on Google Earth, even though no one had ever seen it.

How could such an error have made been made, and repeated again and again? James Cook first put Sandy Island on a map in 1774, and a later whaling ship seemed to verify his false sighting when it spotted floating pumice from an underwater volcano. Subsequent maps of the region included the tiny island with the humble, unassuming name. In 1979, the French Hydraulic Service disproved its existence and removed it from its charts, but it somehow survived on other charts. It even remained on the World Vector Shoreline Database for decades afterwards, and Google added it to Google Earth. A search of the island would show a blank, darkened area of sea.

Because of the island’s remote location and small size (15 miles by 3 miles), it was able to escape undiscovery for many years. But in November, 2012, an Australian surveyor ship passed through that area to try to clear up some discrepancies in their charts, and they determined that no such island existed at that location. Once they made this undiscovery, Sandy Island was finally taken off the map by Google and National Geographic, and the cartographers of the digital age all had a little taste of humility.

The takeaway: Although there may be no new places to discover on earth, we’re still undiscovering places we used to think existed. Now get out there and prove those old cartographers wrong!

Centuries ago, political power used to be displayed so much more colorfully than it is today.

What exactly do I mean by that? Take a look at this map from the mid-15th century, the “Catalan-Estense” map. This was created before the Age of Exploration began in earnest, and Europeans still did not know that the Americas existed. They had not even rounded the continent of Africa yet. There are a lot of blank areas on the map, but they populated some of these unknown lands with curious robed figures. These are supposed to be kings, dressed in regal garb, ruling over their respective territories. Even in places that Europeans had barely seen or understood, they surmised that there would be a power-wielding king in charge, and they illustrated this fact as directly as possible.

The European section of the map, meanwhile, chooses different colorful representations of political power. England, France, Spain, and the other kingdoms of Europe are distinguished by their shields and flags, as seen below:

The map is dominated by these kings, flags, and shields, all different manifestations of power. Think about how different this is from a map produced today. On a current political map of Europe, for example, each nation is clearly delineated and colored, with the capital and main cities labeled. Paris, France, is usually indicated by a star, not a picture of Francois Hollande’s face. Sometimes flags appear on maps too, but often not.

The point is that simply by labeling a section of the map as “France” and giving it a different color from the countries around it, we (generally) recognize that nation’s claim to power over that territory. Now we believe, at least in democratic countries, that power should derive from the collective will of the people to be autonomous. In the past, a king or other autocratic ruler claimed to hold power which derived from his own position of strength or as a gift from God. People swore loyalty to their king; they were his subjects. The power of the king was thus reinforced by putting the king’s visage, or flag, or shield, which he would carry with him as he rode into battle, on the map. The king and the country he ruled were intertwined; as King Louis XIV said, “I am the state.”

Today, it seems that we no longer feel this way. The leader has become divorced from the country he or she rules. And political power is no longer colorful and concrete. Instead, it has become abstract, based on collective agreement in certain goals and principles. In a map of the United States, the capital city star over Washington, D.C., represents the power held by the executive (President Obama), the legislative (both houses of Congress), and the judicial branches (the Supreme Court and all lower federal courts). Rather than one man in royal clothes, we have an entire governmental apparatus that now includes thousands and thousands of people, all holding a degree of administrative power over the citizens of the U.S.

Of course, all of these people would not fit on the map, so we settle on an abstract manifestation of this power instead. But old maps hold a certain amount of charm by harkening back to the days when power was simple, direct, and we knew from whence it had come.

Well, we’ve definitely gone quite far down the rabbit hole this week! Stay tuned next week when we will take a look at some maps of Panem from the Hunger Games.

I know what you’re thinking. Just 42? Well, keep following my blog and you’ll see plenty more!

Anyway, I recently ran across a great YouTube video called “42 Amazing Maps”, narrated by a charmingly nerdy video blogger (username: vlogbrothers). It’s full of great insights about maps, both historical and current, and it’s pretty funny, too! Pay attention, though, because he moves pretty quickly. He actually edited out every time he stopped to take a breath!

I really enjoy how the video makes the point that areas on maps can be deceiving. People are very unevenly spread across the globe, so many countries that look gigantic and significant will look much, much smaller if you resize them according to their populations.

In addition, flattening a spherical shape into a Mercator projection greatly distorts reality, especially at the poles. Greenland looks bigger than Africa, when in fact Africa is bigger than the US, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, all of Eastern Europe, China, and India, COMBINED. It’s almost unbelievable until you see the map for yourself, and realize that the actual land areas add up.

In 2007, the webcomic xkcd created a fantasy map of online communities. The size of each area corresponded to the estimated membership of that community. At the time, Myspace was the biggest nation in the online world. Facebook was modestly sized, Twitter was not big enough to be included (although it had been founded the previous year), and YouTube is merely a Gulf rather than a nation. Older communities such as Yahoo and AOL have been banished to the Icy North. Meanwhile, the string of islands to the West in the Sea of Subculture includes a tiny section of an island named Reddit, which would go on to become a much more influential force in promoting memes and viral content in the years to come.

Map of Online Communities, Spring 2007 (via xkcd.com)

In 2010, xkcd created another Map of Online Communities. In those three short years, a lot changed. MySpace quickly lost its userbase to Facebook, which soon became the biggest social network juggernaut of the internet. Meanwhile, Twitter and YouTube took off as well, and each was given its own island nation to rule in the updated map. Skype dominates the island of instant messaging, although I wonder why it was absent from the 2007 map, as I’m pretty sure it was around then too. The islands of the Sea of Subculture have relocated to the Sea of Memes in a more central location, perhaps indicating their increase in viral influence. Now Reddit is the largest island among them, and would likely be bigger today.

This map has a bigger variety of social networks, which I think is not so much due to the fact that more communities sprang up over the course of 3 years, but that the map creators sought to broaden their scope. For example, Okcupid had been joined by eHarmony, Match.com, and Plenty of Fish, but every one of them was around in 2007 as well.

Map of Online Communities, 2010 (via xkcd.com)

I haven’t seen a Map of Online Communities for 2013 yet, but I really hope they do one. It would be interesting to see how online communities have grown or shrunk in the three years since 2010, especially since so much change happened from 2007 to 2010. I’m confident that Facebook is still number 1, but I’d guess that Twitter and YouTube have also grown, and Myspace has probably shrunk further. I wonder where Google+ would fit in on the map. Farmville would be much smaller… perhaps replaced by Candy Crush Saga, the latest “it” game. And don’t forget Pinterest and Instagram, which could fit in somewhere near Tumblr and the photo blogs.

Good luck to all my fellow travelers out there on the stormy seas of the Internet!

For an online mapping and geospatial technology course, I created a map showing the location of the most popular pizza places in New Haven. I used a website called ArcGIS, which allows you to create and collaborate on interactive maps. It can be accessed at the following link: http://bit.ly/14sqfyS.

Here is what it looks like:

My map of New Haven pizza places

When you go to the site, you can click on points and it will bring up information about each place. You can also add your own points on the map. If there’s a pizza place I left out, click “edit” at the top, then “stockpoint” or any other symbol on the left side, and then click on a point on the map to add it. You can then add information about the place. Once you add your own places to the map, you can save it and share it at the top, which lets other people visit your map if you give them the link. Pretty cool, huh?

As for the map itself, I was inspired to create it since I recently moved to the fine city of New Haven and have been sampling its wonderful pizza options. New Haven style pizza is called “apizza”, and it is baked in a brick oven with a very thin crust. Frank Pepe Pizzeria was the first to use this style in 1925, and many people say that it’s still the best pizza in the city, but lots of newer places compete with them for that title. My personal favorite is Modern Apizza, but I have yet to try many of these places. One interesting thing to note is that most of these places are relatively close to Yale’s campus, further cementing the old cliché of the undying love between a college student and a hot, delicious pizza.